Instagram provides all the photo effects and filters that most iOS users need, but if you take a look at the posts floating around on the popular photo sharing network, you are sure to notice that in addition to photos of cats, sunsets and jewelry, there are many images on Instagram that highlight some textual message in an artistic manner. If you are one of those people who like writing something on a photo before posting it to Instagram, you might be frustrated by the lack of text effects and editing options in the app. Fortunately, Textgram is an iPhone app that bestows Instagram with a certain completeness regarding text designs and effects. Users can create beautiful snippets of texts using Textgram, and then share them over the popular mobile photo sharing network after applying the app’s own collection of colorful fonts, backgrounds and templates.

If you are thinking that Textgram will really make you sweat if you want a decent result, think again. Using the app is as simple as it gets. Textgram guides you through each step of text creation. First, you have to enter the desired word or phrase that you need to post. This is done over a simple, black background, but don’t judge the app by that, as the real magic happens in the upcoming steps. Once you have written the text, it will show up on a new screen, where the user is asked to adjust the size and position of the snippet. Position can be changed by simply tapping the text once and then dragging it around. To resize the words, use pinching gestures. Before you do that, however, it is better to choose a Template for you picture. This can be done by hitting the first button in the bottom bar. You can browse through all the listed designs, and they will be applied to the text as background whenever you touch their thumbnail. Once the background is chosen, you can also apply a Frame to the image, and there are some really decent frames available in Textgram.

To spice things up a bit, the app has a nice collection of Stickers, too. After placing a sticker over the image, you can change its orientation and position as well. As Textgram is all about text, there are a few really good fonts and text colors available in the app. When everything is done, hit the Send button in the top right corner, and you will be presented with the options to save the photo to the camera roll of your iPhone, or you can share it to Instagram right from within the app.

Even if you are not an Instagram user, this iPhone-optimized app can still prove to be useful for you if you want to create text-based images for other social networks or just for saving as wallpapers. Textgram has both free and pro ($0.99) versions, and the paid version lets you apply photos from your camera roll as background templates in addition to offering a few extra frames and stickers.